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Compensation & Benefits

Does the FMLA grant leave for foreign adoptions?

04/14/2011
Q. One of our employees is adopting a 5-year-old Ethiopian child and has asked for leave to travel to complete the adoption and bond with the child when they return to Minnesota. Does this count as FMLA leave, since it is not leave within the first year of the child’s life? If it does, is the travel time eligible for FMLA leave?

EBSA moves to rescue ‘orphan’ retirement benefits

04/14/2011
The DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Admin­is­tra­tion (EBSA) has sued Parkland Hotel Investors—once one of the Twin Cities’ biggest commercial financiers—in an attempt to distribute the company’s 401(k) assets to 96 former employees who participated in its retirement plan.

Grant FMLA leave for pregnancy-related conditions

04/14/2011
Many employers think expectant ­mothers can take FMLA leave only for childbirth and baby bonding. They don’t realize that any medical appointments and pregnancy-related illnesses are also eligible for FMLA leave.

Exempt employee does some hourly work? Here’s how to preserve exempt classification

04/14/2011
Here’s some help for HR professionals trying to do all they can to safeguard their organization’s exempt/nonexempt employee classifications—especially in an economic climate that requires companies to do more with less:

How do the new Illinois Equal Pay Act rules affect my record-keeping obligations?

04/14/2011
Q. I’ve heard that there are new Illinois Equal Pay Act regulations I have to follow. Does this affect my record-keeping?

Did Elmhurst firm raid pensions? EBSA, SEC want to know

04/14/2011
Elmhurst-based Results One Finan­cial and its co-founder Steve Salutric face charges of diverting more than $1 million from pension funds it managed.

Work with your attorney to preserve evidence

04/14/2011

These days, much of the evidence used in employment litigation is electronic—such as attendance records. Courts require employers to preserve such evidence when employers reasonably know that a lawsuit could arise. If evidence is destroyed, courts can impose heavy financial sanctions and even hand a win to the other side without a trial.

The best reason to retain personnel documents: Employees–and courts–have long memories

04/14/2011
Employees are often only too happy to go back years to come up with circumstantial evidence that their employers are biased, citing incidents that on their own could not be the basis for a lawsuit.

How not to handle FMLA leave: Do what Chicago did to a seriously ill employee

04/14/2011
Here’s a chance to learn from an employer’s FMLA mistakes. Don’t make the same ones yourself.

U.S. trails the world on paid maternity leave

04/14/2011
You can count the number of nations lacking a definitive law providing paid maternity leave on one hand—and still have two fingers left over. Guess what. One is the United States. That’s what Human Rights Watch found when it studied family leave practices worldwide.